


The Siren

by bones96



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Ableism, Angst with a Happy Ending, But Liam is a very bad brother, Character Study, Deaf Character, Episode Related, Episode: s03e04 The Gang Gets Held Hostage, Family Feels, If You Can Believe it, Implied Past Rape, Margaret communicates through writing, Multi, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Ryan and Margaret have a positive and mostly platonic relationship, Ryan uses sign language with her, Sibling Incest, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 14:27:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15887883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bones96/pseuds/bones96
Summary: Margaret McPoyle feels manipulated and controlled by her brother Liam and wants it to stop. But how is she supposed to stand up for herself? Takes place after "The Gang Gets Held Hostage."Originally posted to Fanfiction.net in 2014





	The Siren

**Author's Note:**

> This one is fucked up. When I was going through my old fanfic and got to this one, I was actually surprised at how dark I got. I think it's good, though. 
> 
> I've always been very intrigued by Margaret McPoyle. She's a gag character, but based on very little we know about her she must have had a very difficult life. I like to think that she's smarter and more insightful than she appears. This is the only thing about her I've ever finished, but I really enjoy digging deeper into who she is.

It had been a good day for Liam and Ryan. They grinned and high-fived all the way back to their apartment, and although Margaret wasn't sure why, this wasn't the time to question. She joined in their festivities, giggling soundlessly as she followed them up the poorly-lit staircase into the hot, stuffy air typical of a McPoyle abode.

It was in Margaret’s best interests to believe it had been a good day for her as well. There had been good things; she’d gotten to carry a gun and make out with a very attractive shirtless man. The gun was fake and the man was a despicable sociopath, but Margaret was dumb and deaf. People expected her not to notice those kinds of things. She always had the option of pretending she didn't.

Ryan noticed Margaret inhaling blissfully and smiled at her. He raised his hands and started to sign that she could spend the night there if she wanted, but Liam said something out loud to him before he could finish. He moved his hand to make it look like he was scratching his ear. The two men talked for a while and eventually retreated to their bedroom, though not before Ryan gave Margaret a quick, jovial thumbs-up.

Margaret smiled back at him from the couch where she'd set herself. Then the bedroom door closed and she let her smile collapse.

She didn't know how much longer she could last without her voice.

The first place she looked was between the couch cushions. She came up empty-handed, which didn't surprise her – Liam could have hidden her notebook anywhere in the apartment, and it wouldn't be somewhere that obvious. But for this, Margaret couldn't leave a single spot unchecked. Her fingers itched as she searched under the couch, against the wall, between the newspapers propping up the leg of the coffee table, finding nothing every time.

She knew what Liam was doing: weaponizing her disability. By confiscating her only means of communication, he left their "enemies" in a state of paranoia, wondering what purpose she could possibly have: was she a femme fatale? Or was she just dumb muscle? He couldn’t let her tell those people that she was more vulnerable and frightened than they were. When she had no defenses, even the most quotidian injustices became traumatizing; people shouted "Do you know what I am saying?" at her so often that it had ironically become one of the few spoken phrases she could recognize. If she'd had her notebook, she would have written those bearded jerks a pithy note to show them that, no, she couldn't read lips, but that didn't make her stupid.

Without it, she could only stick her tongue out at them like a child, which probably just contributed to the disturbing impression Liam was going for. She was still kicking herself for it.

Margaret looked and looked until there was nowhere left to look but Liam and Ryan's bedroom. She wasn't so keen on interrupting the victory fuck her brothers were certainly enjoying in there. Besides, the hot air was making her feel woozy, so she went to the refrigerator, poured herself a glass of milk, and sat back down on the couch, right where her brothers had left her.

Right where they'd wanted her to stay.

They had been out of prison for a year. A whole year, and things had yet to get back to normal. Margaret could remember how excited she'd been to see them when they first got paroled; back then, she'd basically worshipped them. Ryan greeted her with a big bear hug like she expected, but she noticed right away that Liam had _changed_. Maybe it was prison; maybe it was just time. Either way, he'd grown bitter and angry. All of his compassion was gone, even the compassion he felt towards his own family. For Margaret. And it just wasn't fair, how Margaret couldn't control this new person he had become, while he could easily manipulate her to be the person he wanted her to be.

The milk in Margaret's glass had an unpleasant taste. She swirled it around in her mouth as she tried to determine whether it was actually spoiled or if she'd just distracted herself by thinking about an unsavory character. She was still peering into the bottom of the glass, looking for chunks, when a sudden shift in the couch's gravity made her spit the milk out.

Think of the devil – Liam had sat down right next to her.

He was still fully dressed in a fastened bathrobe and tighty-whities, and he was grinding his teeth. Ryan must have been too tired for sex. When Margaret caught his eye, Liam smirked. Margaret flashed a hollow smile right back at him.

Liam cooed something and tugged at his hair. Margaret didn't understand, but after he repeated the gesture twice more, getting visibly angrier each time, she scrambled to imitate him by pulling at the rubber bands holding her pigtails together. Her hair was coarse and knotted and it clung to her sweaty neck like a staticky sock, but Liam watched the struggle to get the pigtails out to the very end. When she was done, he had a proposition.

No, Liam didn't know any sign language like Ryan. But he had a language of his own. He sat close to her with his back arched and his mouth letting a constant stream of hot breath escape. Margaret could tell exactly what he wanted, and in Liam's language, there was only one proper way to answer.

She stuck her tongue out at him like a dumb cow. And what did that mean? Why, it meant whatever he wanted it to; no sooner had she done it than Liam pried apart her lips and slipped his tongue between them. Long and slimy, it writhed inside her mouth, beating her tongue back until she had practically swallowed it. His hands scooped up the hem of her big T-shirt and held it bunched up under her armpits as he pushed her onto her back. Margaret got a brief moment to breathe as he wiped his own saliva from his chin and regarded her breasts with robotic approval. There was no romance in his gaze. No hunger, either, but that was only thanks to him being extremely gay; he claimed to be bisexual, but Margaret knew better than anyone that sex between him and a woman was a power play more than anything else.

Liam unlaced his bathrobe. Trying to ignore the clammy thumbs hooked under the waistband of her boxers, Margaret shut her eyes, lay back, and thought of Pittsburgh. And so it began.

He put his throat against Margaret's ear, letting her feel the vibrations of his grunts and moans so she could mimic them. She could tell by the rhythms that he was actually speaking; she didn’t understand a word, but the things he was saying weren’t meant for her in the first place. Until Liam finished, she was no longer Margaret. She was Ryan; she was apologizing for stabbing Liam in the arm and she was expressing her deep love for him, or at least she was in Liam's mind.

Margaret had to count her blessings – with Ryan, Liam at least tried to be gentle. Once in a while, a thrust would come that hurt her more than the rest, and she could tell that another man's face had flickered through his thoughts. For a moment, she had been spouting dirty words in the gravelly voice of his unrequited crush, the sentry from prison who smoked all those cigarettes. Or perhaps – and this thought made Margaret's stomach flip – she'd become one of the men from the pub. Was she the shirtless sociopath, enduring some kind of revenge fuck? Was she tearfully repenting for his crimes against the McPoyle family, begging for mercy from his master, Liam, the mighty king of Pennsylvania?

Of course, that guy would likely never say any of those things in real life. But as long as Margaret was dumb, Liam could make her say anything he wanted her to.

He bit down hard on her bottom lip, and when the pinpricks of blood appeared inside her mouth, he licked them off. Margaret relished the new source of pain, not because she enjoyed it, but because it distracted her from what was happening below. She found the strength to snake her hands out from under him and grab the sides of his bathrobe. Whether she was pushing him away or pulling him in closer so this could be done with more quickly, she didn’t know. All she knew was that if she'd had a voice, she wouldn't have to do either.

* * *

 

When Margaret woke up the next morning, her big T-shirt had drifted down and covered her waist. It was still bunched up at the sides, but she was a little bit closer to feeling like the night before hadn't happened.

She wiped drool from the corners of her mouth and sat up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ryan milling about in the kitchen. He screwed the cap off a bottle of something and sniffed at it; Margaret seized up, frightened that he was about to take a hit of furniture polish. It was just chocolate milk, though - breakfast. He chugged half the bottle before he caught sight of his sister and cracked a knowing smile.

Margaret quickly looked away. Dammit, as invisible as she was to practically everyone, it was when she actually wanted to be invisible that people noticed her. Her favorite brother sat right next to her on the couch and molded her hand around a glass of two-percent white. He cupped a hand under her chin so she'd look at him and didn't notice how the touch made her flinch.

" _How you feel this morning?"_ he signed clumsily.

Margaret shrugged as she took a sip of milk and immediately spit it out – it was the same glass she'd been drinking the night before, and nobody had bothered to refrigerate it.

" _I tell Liam, he sex too rough."_

Margaret's eyes widened. She put the rancid milk on the coffee table and signed, _"Does he hurt you too?"_

" _You drink milk, please,"_ signed Ryan with a stern expression. _"I hear Liam last night. He very loud. I think couch about to break."_

He chuckled. It made Margaret want to scowl. Because Ryan was oblivious to all the anger Liam harbored within himself. And sure, his ignorance had some justification: he was Liam's best friend and soul mate. He'd been with Liam in prison, so the change had seemed more gradual to him. And he was admittedly quite stupid. Whatever the cause, after prison, while Margaret changed her sign for "Liam" into a simple fingerspelling of his name, Ryan still used their loving nickname "Brother L," and it made her nauseous every time.

" _Look, Mag,"_ Ryan continued. _"Liam tell me you kiss that man in bathroom. That true?"_

Margaret sighed. She should have known this was coming.

" _That man name what Dennis. I know he handsome, but he also very evil. I forbid you from him."_

" _That is a relief,"_ signed Margaret. _"When we threatened to kill him and his friends, I wondered for a second if_ we _were the bad guys."_ She paired the sign with a facial expression of biting condescension.

But Ryan, as usual, did not pick up on the sarcasm. _"Mag, no even say that!"_ he signed with a serious expression. _"We never hurt anyone without good reason. Our only enemy, he who wrong our family. Dennis wrong family. His friends wrong family, also."_

" _I remember. The fat one shot Doyle. Ryan, it was only three weeks a—"_

She didn't bother to finish her thought. Ryan's gaze had shifted to the bottle of chocolate milk on the table, which meant he wasn't listening to a thing she said. Margaret sat helplessly, licking her chapped lips and combing her hair with her fingers until Ryan resumed the conversation.

" _You good girl, Mag. You must never have romance with bad man, or it make you unhappy. And you remember,"_ Ryan signed with all the sincerity one associates with a good big brother, _"no bad man anywhere in McPoyle family."_

If only he knew. Her thighs were still so crusty from the "romance" of a terrible man that the only thing keeping her outlook positive was the knowledge of her own infertility.

" _Understand?"_ signed Ryan.

Margaret's hands just blurted it out. _"Ryan, I want to marry outside of the family."_

Ryan's arms, which he'd stretched out expecting a hug from her, slowly drifted down to his sides.

She hadn't taken the time to think about it, but Margaret realized that she truly meant it. Holding her sore spine as straight as she could, she clarified, " _Not to someone like Dennis. To a good man."_

Ryan stared at her. It appeared he was speechless – of course he was. Margaret knew how he felt about change, especially changes to tradition. She just wanted a response of some sort, and she watched her brother's hands intently, waiting for an answer that didn't come, because just then, the bedroom door cracked open and the beast stomped in.

Liam was well-rested and smug as ever, smirking at no one in particular with that big mouth of his. Margaret's muscles became tense and she snapped her gaze away from Ryan. All of her confidence dissipated. Liam threw a suggestive nod in her direction and she squeezed her legs together as if it would keep her stomach from wildly churning.

Ryan greeted Liam and pointed at Margaret. She melted into the couch, pretending not to watch. She should have asked Ryan not to involve Liam in this. But it was too late.

At first, he laughed. His face broke out in a wicked smirk, barely trapping the shrieking guffaw behind his lips. His upper body convulsed jubilantly as he shoved Ryan on the shoulder, wondering why he looked so serious. As Ryan answered, Liam continued to laugh, but his joy dulled more with every word Ryan said. And before long, the yelling began. He flung spit in every direction, and though based on Ryan's face the noise was a stream of angry nonsense, it was so frightful that Margaret felt it in her feet when she placed them on the floor.

Liam stormed into the kitchen, screaming all the way; Ryan followed. Margaret lowered her head, trying to insulate herself from the shockwaves of Liam's voice shaking the apartment from foundation to roof. But he was a sonic boom, touching and breaking everything in its path.

Inescapable.

Liam got louder and louder until a sudden pop interrupted him. From the vibrations, Margaret could tell something had shattered, probably due to Liam's savage gesticulations. He let loose a shriek and stomped out of the kitchen. Margaret lifted her head slowly, just in time to glimpse him holding his bandaged arm in agony before he slammed the bedroom door behind him.

Margaret clasped her hands together and exhaled shakily through her nose. Ryan sat back down next to her and placed the debris from Liam’s tantrum on the coffee table: fragments of a ceramic flowerpot. They both stared at it for several moments. Then Margaret felt a hand under her chin and she looked up.

Ryan's fingers shook as he signed. " _I do anything for you, Mag. You know that."_ He put a hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the forehead. Margaret wondered if that meant she had his blessing.

Liam came out of the bedroom with a new paper towel wrapped around his reopened stab wound; there was already a dark red splotch soaking through. His incapacitation didn't make Margaret feel less frightened as he approached her, wielding something that nearly smacked her across the face when he dropped it into her lap.

It was her notebook. She would have been thrilled to see it if it wasn't for the page it was opened to, where something was written in Liam's left-handed scrawl:

" _Margaret, you don't have the guts."_

Liam yelled something at Ryan and pointed towards the front door. Ryan then turned to Margaret and signed, _"I take you home."_

Margaret did not obey. She looked back at what Liam had written and, even though Ryan was tapping her on the shoulder and Liam was shouting so loudly that the entire building could have collapsed, she pulled out the pencil that was kept in its binding and wrote a response. She flipped the notebook over so Liam could read it.

" _I am never going to marry a man like you,"_ it said.

Liam's eyes scanned the page over and over, registering nothing but indignant disbelief. Teeth gritted, he pounced forward, grabbing the notebook with his red hands and trying to pull it away from her.

Margaret didn't let go. Her fingers dug into the paper as he tugged harder and harder. Keeping shaky eye contact with him, she parted her lips ever so slightly to keep herself grounded. Liam was overpowered. He bellowed a hot stream of air in her face before fleeing to the bedroom.

When she knew Ryan wasn't looking, Margaret stuck her tongue out at the bedroom door like a winner.

The day before had crushed her soul. But as Margaret followed Ryan to his car, she found it within herself to smile. Today, she was a freer woman, and even though finding a place for herself outside of the McPoyle family would be difficult – _very_ difficult, she realized as she caught a glimpse of her face in the side mirror – it was out there somewhere. She tasted the cool, light outside air and she grinned wider, because the air was like that everywhere.


End file.
